Born when Izanagi, at the last of the purification that washed away the defilement of the underworld, rinsed his left eye. From his right eye came Tsukuyomi, from his nose Susanoo; the three are called the Three Noble Children.
Izanagi charged Amaterasu with ruling the High Plain of Heaven and gave her the string of jewels he wore at his neck.
Unable to bear her brother Susanoo's violence, she shut herself in the rock cave of heaven. The High Plain and the land below fell into darkness, and every calamity broke out at once.
The eight million gods gathered on the riverbed of Ame-no-Yasukawa. They set the long-crowing birds of the eternal land to cry, raised a sakaki tree hung with the eight-span mirror and the curved jewels, and Ame-no-Uzume danced. When she opened the door a crack, puzzled by the gods' laughter, Ame-no-Tajikarao drew her out.
The light had not been lost. It had been hidden. That is what the passage says.
When Susanoo came up to the High Plain of Heaven, Amaterasu suspected her brother had come to seize her realm. She unbound her hair, bound it up in a man's style, and met him with a bow drawn.
To settle the doubt, the two made a pledge across the river of heaven. From the mist Amaterasu blew out after chewing her brother's sword came three goddesses; from the mist Susanoo blew out after chewing her curved jewels came five gods. One of those five, Ame-no-Oshihomimi, was the father of Ninigi.
The sun. She is enshrined at the Inner Shrine of Ise, where the sacred object is the eight-span mirror, Yata-no-Kagami.
Of the three imperial regalia, the mirror is the one this kami gave to her grandson Ninigi, telling him to keep it as her own spirit and to worship it as he would worship her.
A stick that gives light back: dried and bleached pale, bark peeled away to bare wood, colour drawn out by long days in the sun.
What the Bureau weighs is not brightness but the power to return light. No light settles on wood that is dark and damp. Somewhere on the stick, when you pick it up, something must catch.
Note: this section is the Bureau's own reading, not a record from the chronicles.
The share of issued certificates in which this kami appeared. It shifts as more sticks are appraised. Variant spellings are reconciled before counting.
No published certificate bears this kami yet.